The First Century Church
My religious and spiritual life (and lack of) has been all over the map. In many ways it mirrors my physical life having lived in eight metropolital areas. I went to Catholic School, but wasn't very religious, and not Catholic at all. The football team had to go to mass before games, but that was most of my attendance. (I played inside linebacker.) I was involved in a strong church boys choir that toured when I was young too, but I only really considered it vocal and social. I ran around under the church before and after performances and practice. It was fun, but then your voice changes and you get kicked out, so I stopped going there. My father also had strong ties to the founder of a national Protestant church that some of you know about and some might actually attend.
I've read the Vedas, Mahabharata including extensive commentary on the Gita, Ramayana, Puranas, other primary and secondary material, and taken various classes at Berkeley that covered them as literature. But I have never considered myself Hindu, unlike Frederica Matthewes-Green for anybody who's heard of her. However the reading is great and the story more engaging than the Bible. Gambling, treatchery, shooting arrows down with other arrows while riding into a massive battle, turning into a woman only to be widowed -- it doesn't get much better than that. I've even read translated sections of the Koran, but that is because I don't read Arabic.
I've also done the Atheist and agnostic things. While not Buddhist, I did and still do practice Zazen meditation. In fact the first story I ever posted over at Kuro5hin was about Zazen. I started Judo when I was young and that was how I was first introduced.
I've also been associated with two Christian churches that are considered "cults" by other more strict Christians groups, but mostly I just helped out with the food and other community service areas and not really the ministerial areas. (Coincidentally, the group that most attacked one of those "cults" was the same one I have close family ties with, but it has been taken over by a more fundamentalist leader, one my family never liked.) I went back to Protestant Christianity, but left again back to a more don't care version of agnosticism rather than a true intellectual agnosticism, because for the most part I'm lazy.
I don't call myself a Christian because, well, I shouldn't. I have a partial intellectual belief that what the Apostles testified to and what was written down shortly after the crucifixion was true, and that the Christian Church of the time kept true to its teachings. Please don't bother to try and pimp your favorite Church conspiracy theory book of which there are many out there with mutually conflicting stories. There is a moderate chance I've read it. They are a fun read sometimes in the way a mystery novel is a good read. But none of them make very persuasuve arguments, and evidentiary they are all lacking, often just connected by tenuous strains of reasoning. The responses to these books tend to be far superior, but it could just be that the Church has been shooting them down for a thousand years and getting good at it. I know that you can never entirely accept Christianity on logic, but you get to a point where that last step isn't too much, but it is still quite far considering it covers the key aspect of Christianity, the divinity.
I've also gone thought my Jesus Seminar phase, but there are few members that make strongly convincing arguments. Some do some good scholarly research, but in the end many of them are essentially begging the question, starting from the assumption that the devinity of Christ wasn't true then throwing out the supernatural and constructing a living man from what is left, but that doesn't answer the divinity question, so you are left where you started. The bead thing is kind of neat though.
However, even if I did have full belief, that doesn't make one a Christian anymore than knowing that France exists makes one French. I'm not very good at accepting things without proof. Actually, I'm terrible at it. Even when I have the evidence, I'm not goot at accepting things. You can find always find at least one loon to advocate even the most crack-headed positions. I'm not one of those people that "feels" God and believes based on that. I had to read and talk to others I trust to get to that whatever point I'm at.
Faith is what describes a Christian though. Dr Gene Scott, regardless of what you think about him as a person, has the best working conception of faith of anybody, what he calls the ABC of Faith: faith is Action based on a Belief and sustained by Confidence that God's Word is forever settled in Heaven. Dr Scott even has a special word to describe somebody with faith, a faither. It is a conscious activity, like a runner or swimmer. Me, I'm definitely not a faither. I may be a believer at some point or never, but as many of you can probably guess, I'm an unrepetant asshole too (at least to some of you). Calling myself a Christian would be carrying the name of God with me, and it would be a violation of the Third Commandment (the Second for you Catholics following along and the one about taking the name of God in vain for those of you with bad memories). It would be a misuse of God's name to even come close to calling myself a Christian, and I would be massively hypocritical right out of the gates. There is another hard part about it too: I love the ladies.
Yeah, It's taken me a lot of words to say nothing so far. But, here's my point.
About two years ago another person got me interested in reading the Early Church Fathers. In school we did some of that, but I only learned enough to pass tests. I've taken a liking to them. They tend to be a good place to go when questions come up.
I have a very close friend that was raised in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Upon coming to America, she joined the Orthodox Church in America, and now I am being asked to think about it.
It's a large committment and a big step in a new direction. However, if I am going to return to Christianity or really start it seriously, I might as well do it right and go towards the church of Polycarp, Origen, and St John of Damascus. Besides, the theatrics of the Orthodox liturgy is amazing. There is something about tradition, the claim to be the church of the Apostles, and its relative stability when compared to the Roman Catholic Church and its Protestant siblings. They make a very convincing case for its premiership in the Christian tradition. (No pedophiliac priest controversies is also a plus.)
Does anybody have experience with an Orthodox conversion? This isn't a decision I'm going to make this month or even this year. I could take me a couple of years or longer or never. I can't just walk in. I have to go through study, baptism, some proclamation of faith, a whole mess of time and effort.